The subject invention relates to a cooling system for high performance electronic devices. More particularly, the invention relates to an improved fluid cooling system for high performance electronic devices that includes an improved pump and improved heat rejection component.
Many high performance electronic devices require a cooling system to prevent components, such as microprocessors, from overheating, and to improve reliability and efficiency of such components. One method for cooling such components is by utilizing a heatsink and fan combination. The heatsink is disposed in contact with the component to be cooled and conducts heat away from the component. The fan moves a volume of air across the heatsink removing heat from the heatsink and into the air by convection. As microprocessors become faster and more densely packed, more heat is generated by the microprocessors and the size of the heatsink and fan combination must be increased in order to provide the necessary cooling.
An alternative to the heatsink and fan combination is a fluid cooling system. A fluid cooling system may include fluid-cooled heat sink plates that can increase heat flux performance of the system by an order of magnitude compared with air-cooled designs, thus reducing the size of heat sink required to achieve a required heat flux. The addition of heat pipes, impinging sprays, and two-phase cooling can further improve performance of the fluid cooling system. The fluid cooling system may include a substrate with channels formed into it that is disposed at the microprocessor. Cooling fluid is pumped through the channels and conducts heat from the microprocessor. The heated fluid then proceeds away from the microprocessor to a remotely located heat dissipater, for example a heatsink and fan combination. There the heat is dissipated into the atmosphere by the fan moving a volume of air over the heatsink, and the fluid is cooled. The cooled fluid is then pumped back to the microprocessor channels. As heat generated by microprocessors increases, fluid pressure provided by the pump and air volume moved by the fan must be increased to provide adequate cooling. Conventional pumps and fans that meet these requirements can be undesirably noisy as well as too large to meet the size requirements for the overall electronics device.
What is needed is a fluid cooling system for high performance electronics components capable of removing an adequate amount of heat in order to maintain the functionality of the electronics, and that can be packaged into a smaller volume than a comparable conventional fluid cooling system.